On Tuesday morning we were sitting on our deck eating breakfast and M said that he forgot to say good morning when he came into our room after he woke up. So he said good morning. We all responded with good morning. J, not to be left out, noted he had not said good morning, either. So he said good morning. We all responded with good morning. Then, little E, not to be left out, got a big smile and said night-night.
We all laughed hysterically. E, seeing our reaction, laughed and continued to say night-night. I think that was his first joke. He's 19 months. Was it an accident? Random? How did he put morning and night together? Was it simply nonsense and H and I applied the meaning to the moment? He seemed to know it was funny before he said it, but he could simply have been responding to the smiles the rest of us wore. It makes me wonder how much a 19 month old knows, what kind of relationships between ideas and words one can make. Clearly more is going on inside that what one can articulate, but how much.
In the end it doesn't matter. It was a great morning. It was a great way to start the day.
I definitely think that young children can develop a sense of humor (or what they think is funny anyway) and I believe that they "test" their "jokes". I can remember many times when both my kids (before 2 yrs old) were doing and saying things with the purpose of getting a laugh. And of course, they crack me up still.
ReplyDelete@Irish Girl Taken: yea, it's just amazing to me, though, that someone so young can intuit so much. That's great that yours crack you up. If mine didn't crack me up, I'd have eaten them by now.
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